Does Detracking Work? Evidence from a Mathematics Curricular ...

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Detracking 23course taking. The findings present in Table 2 thus show not only that curricular intensificationhas increased the accessibility of Algebra and Geometry in Towering Pines, but it has alsochanged more fundamentally the way course placements are made in the district.The results reported in Table 3 indicate that 8 th grade curricular intensification continuesto influence students’ mathematics course patterns two years later, when students are in 10 thgrade. 10 th graders in the later cohorts are significantly more likely to be enrolled in advancedmathematics courses than students in the first cohort. The odds that students who were in the 8 thgrade in 2007-2008 enroll in Geometry or a higher mathematics course by their 10 th grade year isfour times higher than the odds for students in the 2004-2005 8 th grade cohort. Students in thiscohort were also significantly more likely to enroll in Algebra II or a higher-level mathematicscourse in their 10 th grade year than their peers in the 2003-2004 8 th grade cohort. As in Table 2,these cohort effects remain significant after controlling for cross-cohort changes in studentlanguage status and demographics and 7 th grade mathematics and ELA test scores in Model 2.The expansion of advanced 10 th grade mathematics course enrollments revealed in Table 3 issomewhat less pronounced than the expansion of 8 th grade mathematics course enrollmentsreported in Table 2, indicating that not all students who enroll in more advanced 8 th gradecourses continue to take advanced mathematics courses in 10 th grade. Overall, however, theTable 3 suggests that 8 th grade mathematics curricular intensification has lasting positiveconsequences for student access to advanced mathematics courses, particularly for students withlow 7 th grade mathematics achievement.[Insert Table 3 about here]Table 4 considers the effects of these shifts on gender, ethnic, language-based, and skillsbasedsegregation in the districts’ 8 th grade mathematics classrooms. These findings provide a
Detracking 24look at the extent of classroom-level tracking that is generally unavailable elsewhere in theliterature, since few studies have access to census data and classroom indicators. We find onlymodest change in the extent of gender, ethnic, or language-based segregation in the district’s 8 thgrade mathematics classrooms. However, this table indicates that the district underwent someskills-based desegregation after it implemented its 8 th grade curricular intensification policy. In2004-2005, 68 percent of students who scored in the bottom half on the state’s 7 th grademathematics test would have had to move to another classroom to establish an even distributionof high- and low-skill students in the district. In 2007-2008, by contrast, 52 percent of suchstudents would have had to move to a new classroom. We find similar evidence of skills-baseddesegregation when we consider the extent to which students that scored in bottom quartile onCalifornia’s 7 th grade mathematics test, which roughly corresponds to the students who arecategorized as below basic proficiency in 7 th grade mathematics, shared 8 th grade mathematicsclassrooms with students who scored in the top quartile of the 7 th grade test. Furthermore,although the changes are less pronounced, we also find evidence to suggest that mathematicsclass segregation based on 7 th grade ELA test scores also declined in the district over the studyperiod.[Insert Table 4 about here]Table 5 provides another look at the way curricular intensification changed thecomposition of 8 th grade mathematics classrooms in Towering Pines. The first panel in this tablereports changes in the mean classroom 7 th grade percentile scores by 8 th grade mathematicscourse (General Mathematics, Algebra, and Geometry) across the study period. Even as 7 th gradetest scores improved for Towering Pines students over the study period, the mean studentachievement level within 8 th grade mathematics class levels declined since the district’s
Page 4 and 5: Detracking 3Warning of a “rising
Page 6 and 7: Detracking 52005 school year, the d
Page 8: Detracking 7placements have positiv
Page 11 and 12: Detracking 10teacher professional d
Page 13 and 14: Detracking 12exert a positive effec
Page 15 and 16: Detracking 14Towering Pines in the
Page 17 and 18: Detracking 16have not demonstrated
Page 19 and 20: Detracking 18ordered logistic regre
Page 21 and 22: Detracking 20provides a better metr
Page 23: Detracking 22reported in Table 1, w
Page 27 and 28: Detracking 26The third panel of Tab
Page 29 and 30: Detracking 28over the study period.
Page 31 and 32: Detracking 30below basic in 7 th gr
Page 33 and 34: Detracking 32Towering Pines’ expe
Page 35 and 36: Detracking 34population they did. H
Page 37 and 38: Detracking 36ReferencesAuthors. 200
Page 39 and 40: Detracking 38Loveless, T. (1999). T
Page 41 and 42: Detracking 40Table 1: Descriptive s
Page 43 and 44: Detracking 1Table 3: 10 th grade ma
Page 45 and 46: Detracking 2Table 5: Peer quality a
Page 47: Detracking 4Figure 1: Quantile regr

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